Douglas Carswell's Blog

Sarkozy or Hollande?

A French presidential election is due in a couple of weeks. Should one care? Will the outcome change anything?

Not, I suspect, if incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy wins. We'll have more Euro summitry and muppetry.  More bailout and borrow economics. More talk of reform, without much change.  Not to mention, more of the Love Actually with subtitles.  In short, more of the same.

But what of his leftist rival, Francois Hollande?

Hollande is promising to open up the European treaties and renegotiate the various technocratic stitch ups. Sounds interesting.

He wants to call a halt to using more European taxpayer money to rescue Euro bankers from their own foolish investment choices. Bravo to that.

Finally, he apparently wants to impose a whopping 75 percent tax band on French wealth creators.  As a free marketeer, I'd much prefer it if every nation on earth - including France - had a small government and a laisser faire economy.  But in the meantime, Hollande's tax lunacy would certainly drive more French business and more French wealth creators to London.

Is it wrong that a tiny little part of me wants Francois Hollande to win?

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